Television Reviews

Matlock – The Judge

  • Title: Matlock – The Judge
  • IMDb: link

Matlock Monday takes us back to the legal practice of the folksy defense attorney Benjamin Leighton Matlock (Andy Griffith). Dick Van Dyke guest-stars as Judge Carter Addison, and old associate of Matlock from law school days, who plans the perfect crime in murdering his mistress (Bobbie Eakes) and framing her new lover (Brian Lane Green). Then he becomes the presiding judge of the murder trial and steers the case towards a guilty verdict after failing to get Matlock to give up the case to another lawyer (which is the first moment to raise Matlock’s suspicion and tie circumstantial evidence back to the judge).

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Watson – The Dark Day Deduction

  • Title: Watson – The Dark Day Deduction
  • IMDb: link

“The Dark Day Deduction” introduces a classic piece of the Watson (Morris Chestnut) character by confirming his military service with the arrival of a new patient (Robert Bailey Jr.) who served with the doctor overseas and whose worsening delusional condition both blame Watson for (although the patient has also been carrying his own guilt around for more than a decade). Complications in the case involve a patient who doesn’t want Watson to treat him and the patient disappearing from his hospital room during one of his hallucinations believing he is still in Afghanistan. The thread also ties into the relationship between Watson and Mary (Rochelle Aytes) revealing that the start of the marital troubles came from Watson’s return after the traumatic events which he could never forgive himself for.

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NCIS: Origins – Cecilia

  • Title: NCIS: Origins – Cecilia
  • wiki: link

The First Season finale is a turning point for NCIS: Origins but not for the main story involving a an ambitious MP (Claire Berger) attempting to prove Gibbs (Austin Stowell) killed Pedro Hernandez. We plenty of Gibbs, Franks (Kyle Schmid), Lala (Mariel Molino), and even Randy (Caleb Foote) strategizing how to keep Gibbs out of jail. Eventually Lala puts her own career on the line to keep Gibbs out of danger (and also lays a path for Mace‘s introduction int NIS). While also teasing a potential full-blown love affair between Gibbs and Lala, the episode teases us with a young girl and her dog which will change the fates of both characters in the season’s tragic closing scene.

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Doctor Who – The Well

  • Title: Doctor Who – The Well
  • wiki: link

An unexpected callback to a David Tennant episode, “The Well” deposits The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) takes Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) on a foreign world in the far future where a group of soldiers is investigating what went wrong with all the workers who appear to have gone mad leaving only one hearing-impaired miner (Rose Ayling-Ellis) left alive. Easily the creepiest episode of Who‘s run on Disney+, “The Well” plays on several classic tropes involving gun-totting soliders jumping to the wrong conclusion while The Doctor slowly works through  what is hiding behind Aliss (Ayling-Ellis) and how it ties back to his first visit to the world in “Midnight.”

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Scarecrow and Mrs. King – Always Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

  • Title: Scarecrow and Mrs. King – Always Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
  • IMDb: link

Wayback Wednesday takes us to 80s Washington, D.C. and the unusual partnership between a housewife and a spy. When the American wife (Jane Kaczmarek) of a Middle Eastern Prince (Andres Aybar) returns to the United States on a tour with her husband, and needs someone local to show her around, the Agency taps Amanda (Kate Jackson) while Lee (Bruce Boxleitner), in head of security for the couple, works on uncovering who is behind the recent assassination attempts. The truth that oil baron, and longtime friend of the prince’s father, Bo Johnson (Morgan Woodward), who dislikes the modern thinking Penelope is filling her husband’s mind with, is the target of the attacks comes out at his ranch that weekend.

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